03 Magazine: March 31, 2023

70 Magazine | Art
“I love the roughness of many of the works in this
exhibition and the linocuts in particular – a new medium for
the new modern era of the 1920s and 1930s.”
Given the rarity of this linocut, and the fact it was a unique
version that had been hand-coloured with watercolours
by the artist, it was also felt to be worthy of some muchneeded
conservation treatment by Eliza and rescued for
future generations to enjoy.
Shurrock was one of the young generation of progressive
British artists who immigrated to New Zealand during
the 1920s under the La Trobe Scheme, taking up teaching
positions at art schools across the country in a bid to
modernise attitudes towards art.
Many of them, including Shurrock, Robert Field, William
Allen and Roland Hipkins, had first-hand experience of the
revival of printmaking that began in England in the 1910s,
which they shared with their New Zealand students.
One young artist who benefited immensely from the La
Trobe Scheme was Harry Vye Miller. He studied under Field
and Allen at the Dunedin Art School in the late 1920s and
early 1930s, where Allen encouraged him in his printmaking.
Miller’s family gave me access to a folio of his prints from
this period, and it was an amazing experience to go through
the unframed works. A selection was made to add to the
Gallery’s collection and the story of this relatively little-known
artist and his intense interest in printmaking unfolded.
Miller went on to become a champion of the linocut in
New Zealand, producing numerous examples himself as well
as taking up the artist/educator role. In 1942 he wrote the
article ‘Teaching Linocutting’ for Art in New Zealand, in which
he advocated the democratic nature of the medium and its
suitability for its use by artists and art students alike, due to
the fact that the materials used were very affordable and
within anyone’s reach.
One of the least known yet most talented printmakers
of her generation, Hinehauone Coralie Cameron produced
wood-engravings and linocuts that were at the forefront of
regionalism in New Zealand.
Like so many of her contemporary artists she travelled to
England in the late 1920s. There, she studied printmaking at
the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London; her interest
in modernism grew and she developed an appreciation for the
avant-garde Vorticist movement under the tutelage of British
artist William Roberts.
Returning home to her family farm at Te Ore Ore in the
Wairarapa, she continued her efforts as a printmaker, focusing
on farm work, rural landscapes and wharves at Wellington
harbour as well as modern Māori life at Te Ore Ore.
Cameron was one of the few New Zealand artists to work
as a wood-engraver during the 1930s, although her work
was viewed as too modern by some and was refused for
exhibition by the committee of the New Zealand Academy
of Fine Arts in 1937.
Extant examples of her printmaking are extremely rare,
which accounts for the relative obscurity of her profile as a
printmaker – something I hope that Ink on Paper will rectify.
In the 1950s, lithography was taken up by several New
Zealand artists including Juliet Peter, Louise Henderson and
Colin McCahon.
Peter in particular fully embraced the medium in her art
practice. In England during the first half of the 1950s, she
and her husband Roy Cowan studied lithography at London’s
Central School of Arts and Crafts and the Hammersmith
School of Arts and Crafts.
Lithography was going through a revival at this time, with
many contemporary British painters producing limited-edition
original lithographs.
The complicated printing process aside, lithography is a
very natural medium for painters because it closely resembles
painting in the use of washes and crayons.
Peter found she had a natural and intuitive connection
with it, although she wrote of finding its technical challenges
“exasperating”.
In 1954 she sent eight lithographs from London for
inclusion in the annual Group Show here in Christchurch,
and when she returned to New Zealand the following year
she and Cowan brought with them a lithographic press, with
which they continued to make prints from their studio in
Wellington for several decades.
Although only a handful of artists are included in this
article, Ink on Paper is the first extensive survey dedicated
to printmaking from the Modern era. There is nothing
ostentatious about the prints in the exhibition, yet together
they are some of the most riveting works produced by New
Zealand artists.
Their impact is in the materiality of ink on paper, the
duality of elegance and brutal simplicity, the skill required in
their execution, and the personal scale on which they are
made and viewed. These printmakers were at the forefront
of modernism and the establishment of a New Zealand
printmaking tradition, bringing the medium rightfully into the
fold of respected creative practice alongside painting and
sculpture, and contributing their own voices to a body of
printmaking work we can all delight in.
Originally published in B.211 by Christchurch Art Gallery
Te Puna o Waiwhetū.
Ink on Paper: Aotearoa New Zealand Printmakers of the Modern
Era runs until May 28, 2023 at the Christchurch Art Gallery.